From Environmental Health News:
A new database, available to physicians in Sweden, is the first of its kind in the world, prompted by a broader law in Europe that transforms the way pharmaceuticals are evaluated before going to market.
The European Union requires pharmaceutical companies to analyze the environmental risks of new drugs, adopting guidelines in 2006 that grew out of concern about traces of drugs discovered in waterways and drinking water. Medications such as antidepressants, painkillers, antibiotics and estrogen are excreted by humans, and they wind up in treated sewage that is released into the environment, where fish and aquatic animals, even humans, can be exposed.
While the United States focuses on figuring out how to keep drugs and other chemicals out of the nation’s waterways, the European Union’s approach could be called "benign by design." It goes right to the source, evaluating the dangers of medications when they are created, before they enter the environment.
Read the full report at the link below.
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